Fascinating story in Sunday’s Times and Trib about the rise of college cheating. Cheating is so much on the rise, universities have enlisted the help of Web sites, such as turnitin.com, to sniff out plagiarism – meanwhile, other web sites offer essays-for-hire. The story calls it a “technology war.”

Experts blame increased competition to get into colleges and grad schools for the spike in cheating cases. At UC Berkeley, for example, there were were 91 cases of academic dishonesty in 1998-99, and 236 in 2007-08. UC Davis had 286 in 1998-99 and 393 in 2007-08. Fascinating, disturbing stuff – although we can’t help thinking that the 236 cases isn’t quite as horrifying when one puts it into the perspective of Cal’s 35,000 students. Read the story and see what you think. Then punch a button on the poll and tell us, have you ever cheated?